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Price Targeting and Error Correcting RAM
Linus Torvalds blames Intel for the lack of Error Correcting Checksum (ECC) RAM in consumer desktops and laptops. But what is the deeper reason?
Arstechnica just wrote an article: Why don’t PCs use error correcting RAM? “Because Intel,” says Linus.
Why is this a problem? Failure in RAM is a key cause of things such as bit-rot, where a single byte going wrong in say your JPEG family pictures causing the whole image to become corrupted and unreadable. As someone interested in saving family photos and videos long term, this is something that has bothered me a lot about consumer PCs.
Anyway this story is not really about the problem of ECC RAM, but about why companies such as Intel deliberately make consumer products worse. This is not a problem unique to RAM at all. In fact it is part of a much larger problem existing in any capitalist system, caused by something called “price targeting.”
What is Price Targeting
Price targeting is the outcome of the constant struggle in the market to find the right price according to supply and demand. If a seller offers his goods at high price, he makes a good profit on each item sold, but he will sell far fewer products. On the…
